Robert William Service (Роберт Уильям Сервис)

The Low-Down White

This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down;
There's money to burn in the streets to-night, so I've sent my
  klooch to town,
With a haggard face and a ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown.

And I know at the dawn she'll come reeling home with the bottles,
  one, two, three;
One for herself to drown her shame, and two big bottles for me,
To make me forget the thing I am and the man I used to be.

To make me forget the brand of the dog, as I crouch in this hideous
  place;
To make me forget once I kindled the light of love in a lady's face,
Where even the squalid Siwash now holds me a black disgrace.

Oh, I have guarded my secret well! And who would dream as I speak
In a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung, 'mid the ranch-house filth
  and reek,
I could roll to bed with a Latin phrase, and rise with a verse of
  Greek?

Yet I was a senior prizeman once, and the pride of a college eight;
Called to the bar--my friends were true! but they could not keep me
  straight;
Then came the divorce, and I went abroad and "died" on the River Plate.

But I'm not dead yet; though with half a lung there isn't time to
  spare,
And I hope that the year will see me out, and, thank God, no one
  will care--
Save maybe the little slim Siwash girl with the rose of shame in her
  hair.

She will come with the dawn, and the dawn is near; I can see its
  evil glow,
Like a corpse-light seen through a frosty pane in a night of want
  and woe;
And yonder she comes, by the bleak bull-pines, swift staggering
  through the snow.

1. The Little Old Log Cabin
2. Music in the Bush
3. The Rhyme of the Remittance Man
4. The Younger Son
5. The March of the Dead

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